The exhibition "Become Andy Warhol" Shanghai Station
It will end on March 6. Previously, UCCA Edge, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art Shanghai, recently held the release and dialogue of the new book of the same name, and the three guests interpreted "Pop: The Game of Trends and Criticism". This article is compiled from the lecture.
The contradictions of Andy Warhol and Pop Art
Jiang Wei (Teacher, School of Art and Design, East China University of Science and Technology)
After seeing Andy Warhol's artwork, if you want to understand him further or understand this person, there is a question that you have to face, the contradiction between Andy Warhol and Pop Art, is Andy Warhol just a fashion trend chasing commercial trends? Is pop art a commercial game, or is it a serious, critical form of so-called avant-garde art? Well, we know that these controversies have always revolved around Andy Warhol, including bob Dylan who has just said that he is despised, but some scholars are very supportive of him, so it is necessary to first look at the evaluation of Warhol by some well-known scholars and theorists before.
The first was John Copelands, the founding editor and later editor-in-chief of a prestigious art journal, Artfort, who said that Andy Warhol "seems to have forced us to confront the sharpness of our existence completely by his choice of imagery alone.". The phrase "choice of intention" probably comes from Marcel Duchamp, who once said, "What matters is not the work of art itself, but the choice of the artist." "Then Warhol's choice of the object of his work is actually more random and accidental than that of Dadaist artists, and Warhol's choice is very targeted, for example, he chooses some controversial stars, controversial social hot events, and some very cultural symbolism, such as the Empire State Building, so his selection of objects itself ensures that his work is very meaningful and has become important. Then the second scholar I chose was what Teacher Zhu Qingsheng said, which was what Teacher Zhu said at the last event at the UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, in fact, it was not his own words, but he quoted another theorist, who said, "Warhol uses popular culture to achieve the transcendence of culture", "He is the extreme of the consumerist, using consumerism to fight consumerism, negating and deconstructing it as a whole." In what seems to be self-manifestation, self-denial, the transcendence of the spirit is accomplished." So he is not a subservience to popular culture, but a transcendence and subversion of popular culture.
"Become Andy Warhol" exhibition scene, UCCA Edge, 2021. Image courtesy of UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
Then we can see that the above evaluations are full of contradictions and uncertainties, while there are some over-interpretations, and even some biased misreadings. But interestingly, if we look at Andy Warhol's work, if we look at his words and deeds, we will find that Andy Warhol is not passively evaluated by these critics, he is actually intentionally or unintentionally, even deliberately leading people to misunderstand him or misread him. What he says and does is actually causing this controversy.
Of course, this is a misreading, so why do we see why Warhol says this, why he exaggerates or goes to high-profile to say that we want to do business, we want to make money. As an avant-garde art, one of the characteristics of pop art is to realize its meaning between the polar contradictions of high art and commerce, so how to increase the tension and contradiction between these two poles? On the one hand, pop art tries its best to imitate, or praise the characteristics and mechanisms of popular culture and consumerism; on the other hand, it has to criticize and reflect on consumerism, and it wants to put pressure on the identity and system of high art by imitating and appropriating popular culture, and finally in this way, pop art itself obtains the identity of high art. In a nutshell, pop art contains a paradox in which it strives to make itself a high art by realizing the opposite of high art.
Lecture slideshow information
The artistic and sociohistoric value of Pop Art
Juanjuan Yang (Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Philosophy, Fudan University)
I just followed up on what Teacher Jiang Wei said, how does Pop become an elegant art or avant-garde art?
Let's look first at the critique of the art system. Although Buchlow had various criticisms of Warhol, he still believed that Warhol "more obviously" erased the remnants of the original painterliness, and that he said "more" than other Pop artists, more prominent in the characteristics of reproduction, and "achieved more fierce provocations".
In the entire Pop spectrum, it's clear that Andy Warhol is the one who does the most thorough job of "de-painterliness." He still has a clear critical consciousness of the art system, and is an attacking posture of "subverting painting with painting" in the overall artistic atmosphere. On the one hand, it is a challenge to the mainstream status of the previous Abstract Expressionist painting, and on the other hand, it is a question of society, a question of the universal situation of production and consumption aesthetics that prevailed in society at that time. Later, Warhol also did such a bad thing, a bad thing for Abstract Expressionism and painting.
Pop's previous painting was regarded as a kind of modernist painting, and the most classic modernism was abstract painting. Why do they "art for art's sake"? Because they want to rebel against the fate of "propositional composition". Non-abstract paintings, in any case, are always easy to be used and influenced by the mainstream of society, so they do not paint things with themes and serve the value of art itself. So even if they have themes, in Clarke's view, all these works we think of as modernism, because when we imagine modernism, we imagine a final freedom, a final subversion of capitalism, so even if we don't see this possibility now, we don't know which direction to go, but there is such an imagination, hoping to end the existence of capitalism. It is with such a hope that they will continue to discuss modernism.
We can now understand Warhol's creation from Clarke's point of view. Warhol himself said that in order to become a machine, many critics have noticed his statement in this regard, and he has shown that he has given up on life itself. Although he seems to have some subjective choices, to do a certain field, to do well and then to another field, as if jumping around, making friends with a lot of dignitaries, but there are many opportunities to find his own door later, and not his own conscious request, his personal life is often in a situation similar to depression or bipolar disorder. So when working on a lot of projects, he often can't explain why he did it, and he is a little unconscious. This feature of Warhol is discussed more fully in Foster's Return of Reality.
When Foster exposes these things, he is actually explaining that when society as a whole becomes such a vast machine, there is very little room for individual choice. We are all in an inward-looking society where there are very few choices that individuals can make. So when we are engaged in traditional art, we seem to be able to make a variety of choices, choose colors, layouts, and finally finish a beautiful painting, we will feel very comfortable and happy - as if because of our many active choices, we have achieved a very beautiful thing. And if you do such a work (pop-up) will feel so bored, enter such an exhibition hall, most of the places are boring, do not know why he did this work, do not know why the art museum to do such a big exhibition, show us so many boring things, we will be very honest in our hearts have such a feeling, but this feeling is the most important truth that Warhol presents - the current situation of the world is like this.
Myth Series, exhibition scene, courtesy of UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art
We can sum up two points: the discussion of pop's avant-garde art in art research is not to say that we have to learn techniques—I am still more skeptical of the concept of reproduction if it makes more sense to learn pop's creative skills to do almost the same thing. What I emphasize more is their value as art history and social history, and when we study such narratives, we can better understand our present day and understand our present by understanding their social history, which still has great enlightenment significance for us. On the other hand, we are actually reminded of the forced state of our lives, and we, like Warhol, most of the time actually use ourselves as machines and as tools, but Warhol spreads this out more clearly. Then we still do not want to be satisfied with this situation, or we must try to find a way out, and we must try to find a way out in a better way than him, which is of course more difficult, because life is surrounded by this inner world, and we still need to keep learning.
"Audition": Waiting with Warhol
Summer (PhD candidate, School of Philosophy, Fudan University)
The title I'm sharing today is "Auditioning:Waiting with Warhol." The "Auditions" series is mentioned in the album "Becoming Andy Warhol", which is a very fluid, large-scale production process. After the middle and late Warhol period, he began experimenting with various art forms, becoming a cinematographer, a film director, and doing a lot of work that we thought artists wouldn't have done, including the "Audition" series, which was a long-term project he was working on in his very famous studio, the Silver Factory. In two years, hundreds of New York scholars and celebrities came to visit his "factory" and accept photography. Warhol would take a 16mm Bolex camera and shoot the guest in strong light, and he wouldn't talk to the guest during the shooting, as if nothing had happened, and then the guest would sit there in an awkward and unnatural manner. I don't know if you've ever experienced the process of being photographed continuously by a very indifferent camera, like torture, observing the subject as an object. In the process of creating this series, Andy Warhol did another process after the filming ended, slowing down the original very short time to 4 minutes, and finally a complete film. In this circle, in fact, he left a lot of very valuable video materials. For example, he brings together artists, academics, movie stars, music stars, and some underground stars from Andy Warhol's own circle to work on the project. Some of the familiar names, Marcel Duchamp, in his later years had actually lived in seclusion in New York with few public events, but was eventually invited to Warhol's studio and filmed an "audition".
Bob Dylan was involved in the filming of Andy Warhol's "Audition" series. Lecture infographic.
Then with the "audition" session, I wanted to talk about the relationship between Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan. In 1965, Warhol invited Bob Dylan to his studio to shoot the "Audition" series. There are circles around Andy Warhol and around Bob Dylan, but the two teams look down on each other, especially Bob Dylan himself. In his interviews, Bob Dylan once said that he thought that the most important art forms at that time were folk songs, pop music, and the creations that took place on the radio, and that he thought those creations were closely related to the climate and cultural context of the entire 1960s. And for a hipster like Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan himself is very scornful, and he doesn't like it very much. But interestingly, he still accepted the invitation and sat in the chair to be tortured and filmed for Andy Warhol.
Looking back, the photograph captures the meeting of two artists who were probably the most important in the field of vision and sound at the time before a screen print of An Elvis Presley. The meeting is of historical significance to the researchers, and although the two people do not understand each other, through this confrontation, it seems to mark that they are actually walking the path that each other has taken.
I think for Andy Warhol, fame is something he's been after all his life. Not only in his artwork, both in an affirmative way and in a satirical way. The art he thinks about, as well as the production of art, the image of the artist, and fame add some masquerade energy to these. At the same time, if we look at this exhibition "Becoming Andy Warhol", I hope that you will not forget the origin of Andy Warhol himself, which is what this exhibition has wanted to remind us from the beginning. Warhol himself was an artist of proletarian origin, his father died very early, his mother raised Warhol in a very dilapidated environment, in a heavy industrial city, and he studied commercial illustration, in the very backward environment of Pittsburgh, he went to New York to get ahead, so such a birth background actually directly affected Andy Warhol and finally his pursuit of celebrity and his pursuit of glitz. Then Thomas Crowe also says that in the process, Both Andy Warhol and Bob Dylan changed the basic principles of their respective art forms.
Andy Warhol designed the Bonvert department store perfume window display surging news reporter Qian Xueer picture
In the view of many pop researchers, if we think that pop art is vulgar and vulgar, when we look at pop music, we will give high praise to popular music. Few of us would think of the Beatles as a lack of depth, lack of influence, and lack of power to resonate with the times. But the question is, do we have a completely different perception of visual and auditory art of the same era? In different art categories, we are always accustomed to judging by the criteria of classification. But that wouldn't be appropriate for Pope. Our imagination of the artist stays in a myth, in pre-modern times we think of the artists of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, in modernism we can think of the myths of Van Gogh or Pollock, who have creative, semi-anti-social, semi-isolated personalities, who are artists who create myths of privacy, but Warhol has completely changed this concept. He did a lot of experiments in the process of transformation, one of which was the band manager. In The Book Become Andy Warhol, Blake Gopnick mentions, "When Pop was accepted as the latest art, Warhol immediately turned to underground films, and then local films were accepted, Warhol left again, he started to promote pop music, and then he did feature films, opened restaurants, then sold portraits, advertised, then did TV shows, and he also worked as a magazine creator." Warhol is constantly changing his identity in every field, as well as trying to create an "art of capitalization" in the form of an artist. But even sometimes this "capital art" is just a way of making money for him, it is a kind of life, but he always makes us reflect or ask a question, that is, what is his art and what is not? That's why Andy Warhol has always been a fascinating character, and although 60 years have passed, we think he will never be out of date, and he has always had a close relationship with contemporary life.